Henry Hudson and Some Mermaids

Mermaid and Other Water Spirit Tales From Around the World starts with nine articles about mermaids and such and several of them reference the logs of sea captains who recorded encounters with mermaids. Henry Hudson and Christopher Columbus are the most frequently quoted due to their fame. Here is one of the excerpts about Hudson:

From "A Chapter on Mermaids" by Lieutenant Charles R. Low, I.N. in The United Service Magazine (1878):

A remarkable reference to these fabulous creatures is contained in the following passage in the “Second Voyage or Employment of Master Henry Hudson, for finding a passage to the East Indies by the North-East,” written by himself.—“June 15, 1608, lat. North, 75° 7’. This morning one of the companie looking overboard saw a mermaid, and calling up some of the companie to see her, one more came up, and by that time she was come close to the ship’s side, looking earnestly on the men; a little after a sea came and overturned her; from the navill upward her back and breasts were like a woman’s, (as they say that saw her,) her body as big as one of us, her skin verie white, and long haire and hanging downe behind, of colour blacke; in her going downe they saw her tayle, which was like the tayle of a porposs, and speckled like a macrell. Their names that saw her were Thomas Hilles and Robert Rayner.”